US Intervention Will Only Make Middle Eastern Turmoil Worse

Recently, the U.S. government has been dealt setbacks in five of the seven
developing, Islamic countries in which its military recently has attacked or
invaded since 9/11 – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen. In the other
two countries, Pakistan and Somalia, the situation remains extremely unstable.

In Syria and Iraq, the brutal ISIS group, which is mainly a threat to the nearby
Middle East region, captured the cities of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban attacked the parliament building in Kabul, the capital,
overran two northern districts, and threatened the major city of Kunduz. Such
Taliban gains in the north are unusual, because their traditional strength in
Afghanistan has been in Pashtun tribal areas in the south and east. In Libya,
the U.S.-led overthrow of the Gaddafi regime, using air attacks, has resulted
in a split country with war between tribal factions using Gaddafi’s plentiful
arms stockpiles, radical jihadist bases being set up, and ISIS taking over the
coastal city of Sirte. In Yemen, despite US air strikes and drone attacks over
the years, and Saudi Arabian air strikes more recently, the Iran-friendly Shi’ite
Houthi rebels have overran much of the country and put the US and Saudi-backed
Hadi regime into exile. Also Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, an affiliate
of the main group, has taken advantage of the anarchy in Yemen to expand its
territory.

The American media report on all of this turmoil with great hype, as if most
of these faraway conflicts impinge greatly on US security. Most of them don’t.
Of course, this nationalist media coverage always makes it seem natural that
the US military should be intervening in all of these countries to "do
something" about their problems to prevent jihadist groups from arising
or expanding. Yet the evidence seems to show that US military interventions
create more jihadists (for example, as documented by journalists in Yemen) or
new and worse groups (the US invasion created al Qaeda in Iraq, which morphed
into ISIS).

Yet radical Islamists existed for decades before 9/11, posing little or no
threat to the distant United States. In fact, during the Cold War, the United
States fueled Islamist jihadism to battle communism – for example, aiding the
Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, which would morph into the original al Qaeda
group.

Since the United States rarely leaves completely anywhere its military has
been – for example, Europe, Japan, Korea, and now Afghanistan and Iraq – it
is hard for the public to avoid the fear of the resulting consequences that
the bipartisan foreign policy elite has instilled about such an "unthinkable"
policy option. Yet one such example exists that might prove instructive – Ronald
Reagan’s ignominious withdrawal from Lebanon after the Iran-supported Hezbollah
group blew up a Marine barracks, killing 241 US military personnel.

Of course, Reagan’s first mistake was sending "peacekeeping" troops
to Lebanon to help Israel – whose leaders had lied to the United States about
the expansiveness of its war aims – stabilize the country after the Israeli
invasion force withdrew in 1983. US forces ended up getting enmeshed in a civil
war, fighting Muslim factions on behalf of an Israeli-supported Christian minority
government. The bombing by Hezbollah of the Marine barracks was in retaliation
for that one-sided US intervention. The instructive point here, however, is
what happened after Reagan withdrew US forces from Lebanon – Hezbollah gradually
attenuated its attacks on US targets.

Groups – even radical or brutal ones such as Hezbollah, al Qaeda, or ISIS –
rarely attack for no reason. Most Americans believe they are either "crazies"
or are attacking US targets because they are jealous of the United States being
the best country in the world – or as George W. Bush put it more subtly after
9/11, they are attacking the United States because of its "freedoms."
When Bush told the American people this whopper, it infuriated Osama bin Laden
so much that he again stated why he was attacking the United States – essentially
US meddling in Muslim lands.

Americans also think that if you try too hard to explain the motives of such
groups then you are taking their side, not playing on the "American team,"
or are condoning their brutal tactics. Yet any general of any competence knows
that you need to understand your enemy and what motivates his attacks. In fact,
it is dangerous to remain oblivious to the reason the adversary is attacking,
as most Americans have since 9/11.

Clearly, Muslims do not like non-Muslims attacking, invading, or intervening
in Islamic lands. They were sick of it in the late 1800s and first half of the
1900s when the colonial empires did it and they continued to be sick of it when
the United States took over policing the Middle East for these declining empires
after World War II.

Yet what Americans perceive as an increasingly violent and chaotic Islamic
world is not all America’s fault. Even before US post-World War II interventions,
such regions were often in turmoil. However, since World War II, US interventions
have made often things worse through unintended consequences and have put a
bull’s eye on American targets for retaliatory attacks.

If the United States would tone down its policy in the Middle East and the
broader Islamic world, radical Islamists would not go away – they have always
been there – but they would be far less likely to attack US targets – as the
example of Lebanon indicates.